this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 157 points 1 week ago (21 children)

I cannot comprehend people who agree to have a spy in their own home and they even pay for the privilege.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Its easy, people simply dont even think that it could be used to spy on them. Its just handy and funny tool. There is HUGE problem in the world with majority still naively trusting corporations to such extent saying anything to contrary seems like you are some conspiracy nut. Or if they don't trust them naively, they are so apathetic that they just think their information leaking doesnt matter, it can't be stopped anyway and that they just dont care about it.

Something really should be done to start having people care about things again, otherwise everyone will lose all rights to privacy eventually.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Pizza Over Privacy", a Stanford study... https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/pizza-over-privacy-paradox-digital-age Basically, people trade their privacy for convenience and don't consider the long term cost.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

To see whether a small incentive could influence a decision about privacy, researchers offered one group of students a free pizza — as long as they disclosed three friends’ email addresses.An overwhelming majority of the students chose pizza over protecting their friends’ privacy.

While I don't dispute the thesis, this is deeply flawed.

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[–] [email protected] 134 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

In 2023, 60% of UK households had a smart speaker, up from 22% before the pandemic.

Jesus Christ. I had no idea so many people were buying these things. That's astounding.

If you'd asked me to guess what percentage of households had one, I'd have guessed single digits.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I got several free from both google and amazon. My electric company gave me one too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because we are the product...

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

remember when Texas power turned off peoples heaters when they were freezing to death as Rafael Edward Cruz went on a tropical vacation?

yeah, they did that because those people registered their smart thermostats with the company and gave them control to set the temperatures in their own damn homes.

"smart" means, "you don't own it".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (5 children)

That depends on the kind of "smart".

I have a bunch of IKEA "smart" light bulbs, but they are connected through a Sonoff USB Zigbee dongle. And all of it is controlled through the open-source zigbee2mqtt and home-assistant.

No one, but myself and my family, have any control or ownership of any of those devices.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

My parents' ISP router has Alexa integrated into it

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

whatthefuck

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

60% of people in UK are certified morons. Slightly higher than I expected.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What is the absofuckingworstly scariest thing about this is that I've personally read quite a few sci-fi books, like in half of them, like in any universe, such things were usually a Trojan horse by the threat of the week to exterminate the good guys, or at least Palpatine's way of spying, or whatever.

OK, Palpatine's coolest microphone was decorative trees with skin changing colors depending on vibrations, and a very complex system of restoring the sounds from image, if I remember that correctly, in one X-Wing book.

So how the hell does it happen that such things are presented in movies and books and series like a threat, and yet people buy them?

I can believe in people loving touchscreens because touchscreens were unfortunately popularized in Star Trek and even, sigh, Star Wars prequels, and everything sci-fi.

But this is something that was being recommended against in such media for decades.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

A Torment Nexus sounds cool

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I have three unopened google pucks that I received as gifts over the years.

I had four, but I opened one to take apart to help identify if it was possible to hack it.

at the time it was not. the only part that can be reused it the plastic shell.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 week ago (23 children)

The most concerning part about this article is that they put one in their nine-year-old's bedroom.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Based on the article, it lets her ask them things that she doesn't want to ask her parents, though I'm not sure that if I were 9 years old that I'd suddenly want to discover that my parents have a list of everything I've asked it and are reading through it, much less that Amazon has a database.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, that is a terrible violation of trust. A parent should stop listening when they find out that they have a copy of such conversations of their child. They shouldn't write a newspaper article with citations about it

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Yeah, that's a terrible idea.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

This seems like a bad idea, to me

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To add to the other responses, and I suspect the real reason, is that Coco is listening to Audible Audio books regularly and/or music. It's mentioned and then dropped by the article fairly quickly.

Interesting how every comment on the article is doing the "you're a terrible parent, how could you do that" routine when I'll bet it's there because Coco either took the first one in or asked for a second one. Kid wants, kid normally gets one way or another.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Also, surely this device is no different to a phone in that neither is meant to be listening indiscriminately. There's a chance a 9 year old has a phone nowadays I'd imagine

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They work great as an intercom, if you have them in every. Room

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, an intercom between you, your kids, and Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Alexa, why does daddy yell and hit mommy?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Because you won't eat your veggies and make your bed.

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[–] Timecircleline 33 points 1 week ago

I asked my google home the same question and it told me that I told it that my dog is a good girl 3 times. I know it's not great for privacy, but it made me chuckle.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I asked that to chatgpt once and it's answer was something like "You like to translate R code to Python" just because I sometimes ask it's to translate R to Python, but I don't personally like it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You don't like doing it so you ask something else to do it for you.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (15 children)

It's completely irrelevant to the article, but I can't believe nobody mentioned how many fucking headphones this person goes through lol

particulars of every purchase I’ve ever made – from the noir novel I bought on the day that Amazon UK launched to the 28th pair of headphones acquired in as many years

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

someone need to backbone capitalism, he is a hero

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

they have hostile lobes

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I feel like I looked into a bag labeled 'everything Alexa has ever heard' and gone, "I don't know what I expected."

On the other side of the coin, the shock shouldn't be what it knows, but what every single other device you own with a micrphone might also know.

Anyone here that isn't as equally distrusting of a stock, off the shelf cellphone is lying to themselves.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I honestly thought this was [email protected] for a second

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

you can go into the app and literally see your request history

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